There are two explanations available as to why Cabinet Secretary for Finance John Swinney did not use HM Treasury's Sleeper grant of £50 million for the kind of "accelerated spending" on infrastructure successfully used in the past.
The straightforward one is that the Scottish Government has genuine cause to be worried about the scale of pressures on its capital programme in the next couple of years. If Swinney can see a build-up of pressure from existing spending commitments, he might have good reasons to believe that he will not have the "headroom" to risk not being able to recover £50m when the Sleeper is ready.
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